


Tomcat

by codefiant



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alien Biology, Alien Genitals, Depression, Discussion of Abortion, Discussion of transgender issues, Gen, Gender Issues, Medical, Pregnancy, Reference to intersex surgery/genital mutilation, The Lions Are Fey, Trans Female Pidge | Katie Holt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-08
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2019-03-28 18:34:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13909815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/codefiant/pseuds/codefiant
Summary: In which Keith learns that:1. He doesn't have abnormal human genitals, he has normal galra genitals.2. Normal galrafemalegenitals.3. He's pregnant.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I did mean to start posting this before season five was released. Whups.
> 
> This is the fic in which I kept accidentally projecting, thought about it and realized _why_ it was so easy to accidentally project, then gave in and projected All The Live Long Day. It's also a fic that I affectionately refer to as the Keith vs. Alien Genitals fic.

At the sound of someone entering Medical, Ardis looked up from the new supplies she was putting away to see the base's token... well, token something at any rate. “Keith. Can I help you?”

The kind-of human nodded. “Yeah. I think I might be... turning galra? Is that a thing? My nails are starting to look weird.”

Ardis turned to face him fully. “Come over here and let me see.” Obediently, Keith walked over and held out his hands. Ardis took one of them in hers and looked closely. Indeed, the previously fragile nails had grown thicker since she'd last seen them, and had started to develop something of a point. “Not necessarily. This is something that happens to non-mixed galra as well.” She peered at... him, right? How did human gender work anyway? “Have you been feeling sick to your stomach lately? Throwing up?” Keith nodded. “What about the area around your nipples, has it been feeling tender?” Another nod. She let go of the hand and gestured to the private exam room. “I suspect I know what this is, but I would like to do a more thorough examination.”

Keith followed her in, and she shut the door behind them. “Take off your shirt and lie down on the table there.” As he did so, she flicked the switch to turn on the scanner and rolled it over next to the table. Keith was ready for her by the time it finished booting up. She pulled on the arm to position the viewscreen over his stomach, then calibrated it to show her what she wanted to look at. “Hmm. Could you possibly push your pants down slightly?” Keith did so, and Ardis moved the scanner further down his body. “Yup. As I suspected. You're pregnant.”

“No I'm not.”

Ardis looked up from the scanner to see absolute conviction on Keith's face. “Yes, you are.”

“No, I'm _not_. I'm intersex and sterile.”

“Unless intersex means something very different to you than it does to me, you're not intersex. I'm looking at perfectly average internal female reproductive organs. And you're definitely not sterile.” She gave him her best 'I'm a doctor and you're not being healthy' look. “Do you ever masturbate with your labia?”

“My _what?_ ”

Ardis sighed and projected the scanner's viewscreen onto a screen on the wall so that Keith could see. “Look. This,” she pointed, “Is your ovary. This is your uterus. This,” she pointed at a tiny lump on the wall of the uterus, “Is the fetus. And this,” she moved her finger in a circle to encompass the mass taking up most of the space in his uterus, “Is all your dead, unexpelled eggs. Did no one ever tell you that you need to masturbate with your labia as often as you do with your penis? A burst uterus is a medical emergency.”

Keith closed his eyes. “A person has a uterus and two ovaries, _or_ a penis and two testes. I have a penis, a uterus, and a single ovary. I am intersex.” He sounded vaguely like he wasn't sure what was real anymore.

Ardis... was beginning to see where the problem was. “Is that normal for humans?”

“Yes.”

“Well a galra male has four testes and a uterus. A galra female has a penis, a uterus, and an ovary.”

“Oh my god,” Keith said quietly.

Ardis flicked the switch to turn off the scanner. “First off, apparently you need some sex ed. After that we can talk about your current health issues.”

“Oh my god,” Keith said quietly.

* * *

If Keith had thought that a secret rebel base would not have sex ed diagrams handy, he was wrong. And sex ed was definitely worse when the diagrams actually looked like your junk.

Mostly.

“Stimulating your penis also stimulates your ovary, causing ovulation,” Ardis was explaining, Keith both trying to pay attention and trying desperately _not_ to. “Thus, an egg is available for fertilization when the penile orgasm takes in your partner's sperm. But if fertilization isn't desired or achieved, then the egg must be expelled through a labial orgasm. Unfertilized eggs _absolutely must_ be expelled. If they are not then they will build up until ultimately your uterus will burst requiring a hysterectomy and causing a strong risk of peritonitis.”

Keith absolutely did not want to ask this question, but also kind of had to. “So... that's what... the labia is supposed to look like?”

“Yes. Why, does yours not look like this?”

“No it doesn't. Anymore.”

Ardis narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean, _anymore?_ ”

* * *

As soon as Ardis got Keith's feet up in the stirrups and got a good look at what she was dealing with, only the fact that her fingers were in Keith's genitals stopped her from cussing. She gently spread the tissue out, getting a good look at the surgical scars. “They did this deliberately,” she said evenly.

“Yeah. I mean, I didn't know that that specifically is what they did, but I knew they did something, so. Yeah.”

“A human doctor removed the vast majority of your labia, causing a serious reproductive health problem, because they couldn't handle something _different?_ ”

“Well if it did look like that picture, then I can kind of see how they might have thought they were preventing a health problem. Human labia aren't long and... tube-y. They're just sort of. Flaps.”

“Flaps.”

“Yeah.”

“Like how they gave you.”

“Yeah.”

Ardis removed her hands and sat back before they started shaking and she poked him someplace exceedingly uncomfortable. “How much feeling do you have in what remains?”

“Some? I mean it's definitely still sensitive. I just... don't know how much normal is.”

“Have you ever tried to masturbate with it?”

“Once, but there was cramping and blood came out and I freaked out and never did it again.”

“That's supposed to happen, that was your menses. The blood part anyway.” She rolled away on her stool and binned her gloves, then opened a drawer and started pulling tools out. “Well while I've got you up there I'm going to take a look inside. It's possible that some of the eggs have coagulated together to the point that they can't be expelled naturally. Before I give you your marching orders, I want to know if that's the case.” She closed the drawer, put on a new pair of gloves, and went to work.

* * *

Keith felt like he was floating. There was absolutely no way any of this was real. No way at all. This was all just a really weird borderline nightmare. Ardis was talking, and he probably needed to pay attention, but it all went right over his head. Whoosh.

One: apparently he was female. Which... would make him transgender? Except he was assigned male at birth and raised male, which was the big thing, wasn't it, so he wouldn't be transgender? But to a galra him being male conflicted with his genitals so, if galra even have a concept of transgender, they would think he was transgender, so he would be?

He should shelve that identity crisis for now. There were more immediate problems. Like the fact that he was apparently _pregnant_. “So...” he interrupted, “Can galra reproduce alone? Like, without a partner?”

“You mean, asexually?”

“Yeah.”

Ardis shook her head. “No, both partners are needed for reproduction.”

Keith let out a breath that he didn't realize he was holding. “Then I'm not pregnant.”

Ardis eyed him. “Yes, you are. We covered how this works, I showed you the fetus. And you have multiple secondary signs: morning sickness, the sharpening of your nails, and tenderness around your nipples, which indicates development of breast tissue.”

Keith promptly choked on air, forgetting entirely about protesting the alleged pregnancy. “I'm growing _breasts?_ ”

Ardis nodded, looking way too much like this was totally normal. “Yes. Female galra, as well as any male partners, grow breasts during their first pregnancy.” Keith let his head fall to stare at the ground, and let out a low, panicky sound. “...I take it that's not how humans work.” Keith shook his head dumbly. Ardis sighed. “I can tell you're having trouble wrapping your head around this. So we'll just take this one step at a time. Masturbate with your labia until you've expelled all the old eggs, or at least as much of them as you can, and then come back and we can talk about next steps.”

If Hell had a soundtrack, Keith was pretty sure it was the noises his brain was making right now.

* * *

Expelling all the dead eggs (menstruating, his brain unhelpfully supplied) caused, as Ardis had warned him it would, truly _horrific_ cramping, which was apparently his body's way of punishing him for not doing it before. She had also said that there was a small chance he would also lose the fetus that definitely didn't exist, but to Keith's eternal dismay all the blood and tissue had been brown and dead, and yes, he had poked through it with the tip of his knife to double check. It had been nasty, and totally necessary for his mental well-being.

In return, Ardis had congratulated him on being able to get it all out on his own so that she didn't have to reach in and drag it out with tools, which, _ouch_ , and then showed him a much clearer image of the couldn't be a fetus.

“You're definitely mistaking something else for a fetus,” Keith had said.

“I'm definitely not,” Ardis had shot back. The resulting argument had culminated in Ardis taking his hands in hers and saying, very gently, that she could help him, and if he gave her permission to talk to Kolivan about it Keith wouldn't have to get any more involved than he absolutely had to. It wasn't until after he left Medical that he realized she thought he had been raped by another Blade and didn't want to admit it.

He needed an adult (you are an adult, his brain unhelpfully supplied), or he needed to curl up in his bed until things stopped happening so much. Given the lack of available parental figures, bed won out.

* * *

As soon as Keith's face came up on the screen, the first thing out of Shiro's mouth was destined to be, “You look terrible Keith.”

Keith pushed unkempt hair out of his face. “Yeah, well, I feel terrible, so. Yeah.”

Shiro frowned. “Has Kolivan been pushing you too hard? You need to tell him if he is Keith, it's okay if you can't keep up. You're not fully galra so-” Keith cut him off with a slightly hysterical laugh. Shiro blinked. “What did I say?”

Keith didn't answer verbally immediately. Instead he slid lower and lower in his seat, until he was almost past the bottom of the screen. “I don't want to talk about it.”

“Okay, then we won't. But you still need to take care of yourself, okay? Take a shower after we're done talking. Or a bath, if you think that would help. Do they have baths on the base?”

“There's one in Medical. Ardis would probably let me use it. Unless she decides it's bad for my health.”

Shiro smiled. “Well at least you've got someone looking out for you, it sounds like.”

“Nah. Blissful ignorance is great. Not knowing things is great.”

“You said you didn't want to talk about whatever it is, but you're not convincing me we shouldn't.” Keith pushed himself back up and folded his arms on the desk to rest his weight on them. His hands caught Shiro's attention. “What happened to your fingernails?”

Keith lifted one hand up and studied the nails. “Oh, these? I'm growing claws. To defend myself. Apparently.”

“Is... this on purpose?”

“Uh, no? Why would I do that on purpose? _How_ would I do that on purpose?”

“Have you seen someone about it?”

Keith let his hand drop back down to the desk. “Yeah. It's a side effect of... some... shit.”

Shiro was liking Keith's evasiveness about whatever was going on with him less and less. “Keith... you'd tell me if you were dying, right?”

_That_ got Keith's attention. He sat straight up. “No. I mean, yes, yes I would, and no, no I'm not. I am not dying, I am definitely not going to die of this bullshit.”

Shiro swallowed. “Did a doctor tell you that, or is that something you're insisting on?”

“Nooo, absolutely not.” Keith smiled, almost convincingly. “I'm fine Shiro. Really. Just dealing with some shit, figuring some things out, making some decisions. Really Shiro. You don't have to worry about me.”

Shiro huffed. “You say that like it'll make me stop.”

Shiro let Keith steer the conversation away from... whatever they had been talking about. It was nice to just catch up with him without any sort of pressure or constraints. And as they talked about mundane things, the knot of worry in Shiro's stomach loosened. Keith was not what Shiro would call good at hiding how he was feeling, and talking to Shiro was clearly making him feel better, so whatever it was it couldn't be _that_ bad. Which was why, when they said goodbye and signed off, Shiro made a mental note to call back in a few days to make sure he was taking care of himself but didn't verbalize any worry for him.

Not five minutes later, he had an incoming call from Keith. “I'm pregnant!” Keith nearly shouted as soon as they connected.

Shiro's brain came to a screeching halt.

* * *

“...Pregnant,” Shiro said slowly, like it was something foreign he didn't know the meaning or correct pronunciation of.

Granted, that had not been how Keith was intending to start off this sudden, spur of the moment call back. A better way to start probably would have been something like, “Hey, so I've decided to tell you what's wrong with me,” or, “Did you know that galra have freaky genitals?” or possibly even, “So it turns out that I'm the space Virgin Mary.”

...Okay, maybe not that last one. But at any rate, instead of any of the ways he could have slid into the topic, he'd opened his mouth and his mouth had cut right to the chase. He buried his face in his hands. “I'm so sorry, that... there was going to be a lead in there, I swear.” When there was no response, he peeked out from behind his fingers. “...Shiro? Are you okay?”

Shiro closed his eyes, gestured vaguely, and said, “Run that by me one more time.”

Keith pulled his hands away from his face. “Doctors on Earth thought I was intersex, but it turns out I'm not, I'm a galra female, and now I'm pregnant.”

“I hesitate to ask about the step you left out.”

Keith groaned. “You've just summed up the source of all of my problems.”

“Keith,” Shiro said slowly. “Keith. _Keith_. Please, _please_ tell me that you have not had so much-”

“No holy shit no!” Keith cut him off abruptly. He moaned when he realized how obvious he had made that conclusion seem. “That is... the opposite of my problem. I have not had sex. There has been no sex. There are no memory blanks where the sex could have gone. Zero sex. Zero baby-making. And yet, baby. Maybe.” He wasn't sure about that yet. Whenever he tried to think about it, his brain started making ambulance sirens.

Shiro dragged both hands down his face. “Okay. So, you're pregnant. That's a thing.”

Keith let out a shaky breath. “Yeah.”

“With a mystery baby. Which. Is that normal? The way you're saying it it doesn't sound normal.”

Keith shook his head. “No. I'm pretty sure that Ardis is convinced that I was raped by another Blade and I'm too scared to say anything about it.” Shiro snorted, which, yeah, that was Keith's reaction too. “I haven't had any luck convincing her otherwise. She's used her doctor's privileges to take me off the mission roster until I 'fess up or something.”

“You probably shouldn't be going on missions anyway? I have no idea.”

“Probably,” Keith admitted. He rubbed his stomach. “The morning sickness isn't good. But I'm not allowed to spar either, and it's made me realize just how little there is to do around here other than fight and get better at fighting.” Keith was _bored_ and it was making his mind skitter and wander over thoughts that were going to make him crazy.

Shiro, of course, could read him like a brick thrown through a window. “You must be bored out of your skull,” he said sympathetically. “I would say that you're more than welcome to come back to the Castle, but that might not be the best idea. We'd all be happy to have you back of course, but 'we' doesn't include a doctor.”

“Yeah...” Keith trailed off, thinking about what that would be like. Not the part about a doctor, but. Having a baby on the Castle, surrounded by the people he cared about. That would be... nice. Impossible, logistically, but nice. “But either I don't keep it and go back on the mission roster, or I do keep it and I need reliable access to a doctor, and, considering how all this has turned out so far, that doctor has to be galra, which as far as I know means I'm stuck here.”

“Why galra? Is your...” Shiro coughed, “Really that different?”

Keith pulled his feet up onto his seat and smiled into his knees where Shiro couldn't see. This was why he'd made himself tell Shiro, made himself un-chicken out and call him back. Talking to Shiro about things always made them make more sense, somehow, no matter how bizarre the topic was apparently. Maybe it was the act of explaining the problem. Maybe Shiro was just really good at asking the right questions to help him figure things out.

At any rate... “If I keep it, there's going to be... complications. Specifically galra complications, I think. At least, I didn't ask if another species does it.”

Shiro got a vaguely alarmed look on his face. “Complications? Life threatening?”

Keith shook his head. “No. But galra females don't carry the baby to full term apparently? Partway through, they, I guess they, transfer?” he gestured in a way that might be lewd if you squinted, “The baby to a male partner. They call it first labor.”

“But you don't have one.” Keith shook his head. “I assume though the fact that you aren't point blank getting an abortion means that there is an alternative? Can you transfer it to someone who isn't your partner?”

Keith shook his head again. “They don't have to be the other parent, but they do have to be a sexual partner. Something about hormones getting released during pregnant sex. And I wouldn't exactly say I'm close enough to any of the other Blades to ask to be fuck buddies so I can have a baby.” What he was definitely _not_ telling Shiro was that he was missing a part of his anatomy vital to first labor, resulting in a high risk of infant mortality. Ardis had been very firm when she told him that even if he did have a partner, assuming there were no contraindications she would still recommend option two. “The problem is that my uterus won't naturally stretch enough to hold a full-term galra baby. But there's injections that can help with that, and later I would take hormones to stop me from going into labor. The baby would have a low birth weight and would probably be born prematurely, and there'd be all the possible complications from that, but...”

Shiro nodded sagely. “Well that must be how your mother had you, so-”

Keith's brain blanked out. This was revenge. This was revenge for shouting at him that he was pregnant out of nowhere. “ _Stop. Talking_.”

Shiro stopped, mostly. “Oh. You hadn't gotten that far, had you.”

“I don't think anyone _ever_ wants to go that far.”

Shiro shrugged. “You never know. But my point is, from a practical standpoint your mother must have been a pregnant galra without a suitable partner. So clearly it's possible, otherwise you wouldn't be here freaking out over the thought of your mother being pregnant with you.”

The thought trickled through Keith's brain, met another thought, and horror dawned. “It doesn't have to be the _other parent_ ,” he wailed, and commenced banging his head into his knees.

“Keith, you shouldn't-”

“Shiro,” Keith mumbled, just loud enough to be understood, “You have just made me consider the possibility that I may have three parents. So instead of just one parent mysteriously abandoning me, it's possible that _two_ parents have mysteriously abandoned me.”

Shiro's jaw audibly snapped shut. “...Okay, so I can see why this would be upsetting to you.”

“ _No shit!_ ” Keith closed his eyes and breathed in and out deeply several times.

“But it also would mean that-”

“No.” Keith held up his hand to stop him. “I know what you're about to say, and I don't want to think about it anymore in any capacity. So we're going to stop talking about my parents, period.”

Shiro, thankfully, was one of the most understanding men he had ever met and knew when a topic was to be dropped thoroughly enough to give whiplash. “So what are you thinking about whether or not to keep it? Or have you been avoiding the topic entirely?”

Shiro also knew him way too well. “...Avoiding.”

“Well if you avoid it for long enough then that automatically means you're having a baby. So maybe you should get on the ball there.”

“I don't _know_ Shiro,” Keith whined. “A baby right now is not remotely reasonable or practical. Hell even on Earth, I'm eighteen, I'd be busy with other stuff. Like doing adult things for the first time... _Shit_ , have I even graduated yet? Is it spring yet? Do you know-”

Shiro made calming gestures. “Deep breaths Keith. I don't know, but didn't you drop out anyway?”

“I was studying for my GED. I was going to take it around graduation time. For like... I dunno. Reasons. It felt right to do it then.” Keith found his thoughts trailing off into his former future plans. “And then, trade school, maybe? I was already supporting myself doing repair work for people, so I was thinking I might as well get a certificate and make it official. But then again, there didn't seem to be a whole lot of point to it, or anything really...” He sighed. His feet ended up on the floor again and he leaned forward to rest his head on the desk.

Shiro sighed. “I'm sorry Keith.”

“Don't be. It's not remotely your fault that my head got all fucked up like that. Maybe it would have happened even if the Kerberos mission hadn't gone missing. Maybe my brain was just waiting for something to go wrong, and that happened to be it.” He paused. “...Is it too early for pregnancy hormones to make me really fucking emotional?”

Shiro laughed, and Keith had to smile at that.

* * *

Two weeks after Keith had dropped the bomb, Shiro had gotten used to panicked video calls from him at odd hours. And yeah, he was happy to be there for him, be some emotional support that he clearly desperately needed, but. He really wished that Keith would have emotional breakdowns at more reasonable hours.

“I'm keeping the baby,” he opened this one with, looking like he was going to his own execution.

Shiro yawned and scratched the back of his head. “That's what you said two calls ago. And then last call you listed out all the reasons that's a terrible idea.”

“And I stand by them, but also, I'm keeping the baby.”

“That seems... contradictory.”

Keith started ticking things off on his fingers, the nails of which could definitely only be described as claws at this point. “I thought I was sterile and that I'd never have kids, but then suddenly not only _could_ I have kids I _was_ having a kid. Which is definitely. One hell of a way to find out. It almost feels like... a sign? I dunno. And I also want to know where the hell this baby came from, which it seems like the best way to find out is to have it. For all I know even if I do get an abortion I'll just get pregnant _again_.”

“You should not have a baby just to find out who the other parent is,” Shiro pointed out.

“No, of course not, absolutely. That's just. An added benefit.” Keith sighed. “I know it's stupid, but...” he shrugged.

Shiro let out his own sigh. Worrying about Keith was going to kill him one day. “It's not stupid. If you want to keep the baby, then keep the baby. It's not ideal,” _which you've pointed out many, many times_ , Shiro mentally added, “But you have access to food, shelter, and medical care, which are the important things. People have made do with less. Parents have made do with less.”

“It's... a purpose,” Keith attempted to explain. “I had a purpose with Voltron. And then I had a purpose with the Blade. But this is... a permanent purpose. It's not going to drop out from under me.”

Shiro felt guilty. “I'm sorry.”

“Jesus Shiro! Don't be sorry for _not being dead!_ I definitely would rather have you than Voltron, so just. Don't feel that way.”

“Sorry.”

“ _Damn it Shiro!_ ”


	2. Chapter 2

Lance walked onto the bridge just in time to see the Black Lion disappear into a wormhole. “Hey, where's Shiro jetting off to?"

Allura turned away from the controls and smiled at him. “He's going to see Keith.”

“What, alone?”

“Apparently there's something going on with him that he needs emotional support for.”

Lance narrowed his eyes. “Do you not know what that something is, or are you just not telling me?”

Allura gave him a look. “I was given the impression that it was deeply personal and didn't ask further.”

...Suspicious. “Suspicious,” Lance verbalized.

“Lance, whatever you're thinking of, don't.”

Lance narrowed his eyes further. It infringed on his ability to see, but the expression was important. “Suspicious,” he repeated.

* * *

“Hey Pidge, help me break into Shiro's room.”

Pidge gave Lance a flat look. “What.”

“Something has been stressing him out lately-”

“You mean other than the usual evil alien empire stuff?” Hunk interrupted.

Lance plowed on. “-More than usual, and I know everyone else has noticed, except apparently Hunk.”

“Hey! I noticed! I'm just bad at assessing different levels of stressed out. Stressed out is stressed out. It's just bad.”

Pidge still looked unimpressed. “And this involves breaking into his room, how?”

“Because he just ran off to the Marmora base, alone, supposedly to visit Keith, who according to Allura apparently needs emotional support. Now we all know that Keith has no emotions _to_ support, so clearly something else is going on here.”

“I dunno man. Maybe something to do with the fact that he's Galra Keith?” Hunk suggested.

“I still don't see how this involves breaking into his room.”

“Because if we straight up asked him what was wrong, he would brush us off and tell us he's fine. If we want to actually be _his_ emotional support, we need to find evidence first. Evidence which would be locked in his room. And since he's gone...” Lance trailed off, hoping what he wanted suggested itself.

Pidge sighed and rolled her eyes. “You're not going to stop asking about this, are you?”

“Nope!”

“...Fine.”

* * *

Pidge, as befit her genius, got the door to Shiro's quarters open with zero problems. “We really shouldn't be doing this,” Hunk said as they stared into the dark.

Lance counterpointed by flicking on the lights. “We absolutely should.” He strode in. “Now if I were super secret evidence, where would I be hiding?”

“Sock drawer.”

Lance and Pidge immediately looked at Hunk. “Sock drawer?” Lance asked, sounding slightly scandalized. “That's like, the most obvious secret hiding place ever!”

“Which means it goes all the way around to _not_ being obvious, because everyone knows that everyone thinks that's an obvious spot and won't bother looking there, so a smart person would hide it there,” Hunk explained with complicated hand gestures. “And Shiro is a smart person.”

Pidge eyed him. “Seconding you on the second part, not so sure about the first part.”

“Well whatever, you can search the _sock drawer_ , and I'll look around for actually secret secret hiding places."

Very few minutes passed before Hunk said, “Hey Lance, you know how you said I absolutely would not find anything suspicious at all in Shiro's sock drawer?”

Lance looked up from the piece of wall he was closely investigating. “Yeah?”

“Well I found this.” Hunk turned around and held up a small article of clothing.

It took Lance a couple moments to remember how words worked. “One, that's adorable. Two, _why does Shiro have a baby onesie in his sock drawer?_ ”

* * *

In the cadets' defense, Shiro granted them in his head, they were clearly making a very hard effort of pretending nothing was wrong. Their failure was in that said hard efforts were useless. He sighed, and set his spoon down on his plate of goo with a small _clank_. “Okay guys. What happened while I was visiting Keith?”

Allura glared at the cadets. “I _told_ them not to say anything, that you would tell us if you felt like it.”

Shiro frowned. “I would tell you what?”

“Sooo, we kind of broke into your room,” Hunk started.

“I had nothing to do with it,” Pidge quickly said, which Shiro strongly suspected to be blatant lies.

“And Hunk raided your sock drawer even though I told him not to,” Lance followed.

“Hey, _you_ were crawling around on the floor looking for secret compartments.”

Shiro felt a headache coming on and pinched the bridge of his nose. “We can talk about the invasion of privacy later. Where is this going?”

Everyone looked at each other, except for Coran who had adopted an expression of mild amusement. Shiro got the distinct feeling that the older man was laughing at all of them. Finally Lance leaned forward, a conspiratorial grin on his face. “You knocked up a Blade and went to go visit your babymomma didn't you?”

...What. Shiro blinked several times, but nothing about what he was looking at changed. “What. Why would you ever. Just. What.”

Pidge jerked; Lance yelped. “What he _means_ to say is, we,” and yup, there was her admitting guilt, “Found a baby onesie, and that's the conclusion Lance jumped to. _I_ told him not to jump to conclusions, Allura told us not to say anything about it, and Hunk just started crying.”

“Even though you apparently don't feel a rush of emotions when you find out someone is having a baby, doesn't mean that no one else-”

Shiro put his hand up to stop all of this, right then and there. “Stop. That's enough. I'm not having a baby. That onesie is for someone else.”

Lance leaned back with a look on his face that caused Shiro no small amount of concern. It was the _absolutely delighted_ look that quickly followed that straight up alarmed him. “Ohohoho. _Keith_ knocked up a Blade.”

Shiro was blessed with an infinite well of patience. “No, Keith did not knock up a Blade.”

Pidge frowned at him. “But who else would you be getting a onesie for? One of the rebels? I mean it's definitely not Matt or I would know, and you aren't that close to anyone else not on this ship, right?”

...Damn them for being so perceptive. Keith had Shiro under strict confidentiality orders. Having been privy to his recurrent emotional anguish and insecurities over the whole thing over the past couple months, Shiro could only guess how many things were feeding into his desire to keep it a secret. But Pidge was right when she said it had to be either for himself, Matt, or Keith. “Okay, fine. He really didn't want me to tell you guys this, but the onesie is for Keith.”

Pidge leaned back and smirked. “I knew it. Why else would it be red and have a little applique racing hoverbike on it?”

“What?! Why didn't you point that out earlier Pidge?”

Pidge sniffed haughtily. “It's not my fault you're an idiot.”

Hunk frowned. “But if it isn't a Blade member, who did Keith get pregnant?”

Shiro dragged a hand down his face. “Keith did not get someone else pregnant. Keith _is_ pregnant.”

You could hear a pin drop, but before anyone had a chance to do so Lance said, “That's impossible.”

Pidge glared at him. “You know very well that it isn't.”

“No, I don't mean that like guys can't get pregnant, I mean that I have literally seen Keith's dick. I didn't get a very good look at it because as soon as I walked in Keith panicked and basically teleported into a shower stall, but it was definitely a dick.”

“Lance, that's gay.”

“Shut up. And also, my point still stands.”

Shiro needed like, five more hands to bury his face in. They really were going to make him spell it all out, weren't they? “That's what Keith thought too. But it turns out that galra have really different... setups, than humans, and that Keith is... very galra in that regard.”

“If human genitals are so different from galra genitals, then what do human genitals look like?” A beat. “...Please don't answer that, forget I said anything at all,” Allura quickly backtracked, blushing furiously when she realized what exactly she had asked.

Hunk buried his face in his hands. “Oh my god.”

“This conversation is officially super awkward,” Pidge said.

“So!” Coran said brightly, and Shiro hoped to god he was going to change the topic, “Keith's expecting a young one! He must be excited!”

“He's terrified,” Shiro answered honestly.

“Still, that's what the other parent is for, eh?”

That was clearly supposed to be Shiro's opening to say who the other parent was. But what was he supposed to say? So he bit his lip and said nothing. Pidge was the first to speak when it became clear that Shiro wouldn't. “What... about the other parent, Shiro?”

Lance gave it another moment, then said, uncharacteristically serious, “There isn't one, is there?”

Shiro shook his head. “No, there isn't.”

“Oh,” Hunk said quietly. “Is that why...?”

“It's... I think that's part of why he didn't want to say anything, but it's not... They didn't die, if that's what you're thinking. There just literally isn't one. Keith has no idea why he's pregnant. It's why I had to run off to see him. They did a paternity test, to try to find out at least what _species_ the other parent is, but the other parent literally _does not exist_. It's not a clone, there is other DNA in there, but it doesn't match _anything_ in the Blade's medical records. He was really freaked out, so I had to go.”

Keith, in fact, had been well on his way to completely falling apart when he called Shiro, and he had more than covered the rest of the way by the time he got there. “What if it's a monster?” he'd asked. “Is this a horror movie? Is it some kind of monstrous eldritch horror? It might have a _tail_ , Shiro! _I don't have a tail!_ ” Shiro considered it a minor miracle that he had been able to calm him down to the point where he wasn't worried that Keith would try to induce a miscarriage out of sheer panic and the probably mistaken belief that he might be birthing some sort of apocalypse.

That visit was the first time he'd met the doctor, Ardis, and she was currently his favorite Blade by a landslide (other than Keith). He'd been impressed pretty much immediately by her ability to handle a panicked Keith, which was no mean feat. It wasn't until Keith had panicked himself into exhaustion and excused himself to go sleep that she let on how unnerved she herself was by the whole situation.

Allura frowned, a thoughtful look on her face. “That sounds... vaguely familiar.”

Coran suddenly sat straight up, and slammed his fist into the open palm of his other hand. “By quiznak Allura! You're right! I mean, I'd have to check the records to be sure, but it could be a case of Retired Paladin Syndrome!”

“Retired...”

“...Paladin...”

“...Syndrome?”

Coran scratched his cheek, looking sheepish. “Well, it's not actually called that, it's not actually called anything really. But it's a good shorthand way to refer to what I'm thinking of. Sometimes, you see, when a paladin leaves their duty, _mysterious_ things happen to them. The closer the bond they had with their lion, the more likely and the more _mysterious_ it is.”

“Could you stop putting so much emphasis on mysterious?” Hunk asked. “It's not making me feel good.”

“Well I think we can all agree that the Red Lion definitely, uh, liked Keith,” Pidge said.

“You can say possessive, Pidge,” Lance responded.

“How far along is Keith?” Allura asked.

“Four months, which...” Shiro groaned, “Would put conception around the time he left Voltron.”

“Well like I said I'd have to check the records, but I'm pretty sure we can put at least some of Keith's fears to rest. In fact, I'll go do that right now!” Coran quickly stood up and sped-walked out of the dining room.

“Do you think he might just be trying to get out of his turn to do dishes?” Pidge asked.

* * *

When Keith answered the video call, he looked... well, not _good_ , but better, which was probably the best that could be hoped for, given the situation. “Hey Shiro.”

Shiro smiled gently. “Hey. How you feeling?”

“I'm still a mess. But, like... it's a baby, and so far it just looks like a baby. Even the little stub is normal for species with tails. And if something does go horribly wrong, then... there's something that can be done about it. It would be awful, and I would hate it, but... And if my life does end up at risk, then we'd probably be able to catch it before it did too much damage.”

“Well, relatedly, I have good news and bad news, which is actually neutral news but you'll take it as bad news.”

“Relatedly?"

Shiro ticked off a finger. “The bad-slash-neutral news is, the other paladins know you're pregnant now.”

“Shiro, I _told_ you-!”

Shiro held his hands up. “Hey, I didn't say anything, they figured it out for themselves. Apparently they decided to break into my quarters to try and figure out why I'd gone to visit you on such short notice, and they found... Well, I didn't mention it before, because it was definitely not a good time, but I bought a onesie for you. I saw it in this store and it looked exactly like the sort of thing you'd buy, so I bought it. And they found it, and asked me about it, and... well, you know how they are.” Keith groaned and buried his hand in his hands. “They're really annoyed that you didn't want them to find out and wanted to come visit you immediately, but I told them that we needed to wait until you were okay with it. I know you've got a lot on your plate.”

“Thanks Shiro.”

“The good news is that Coran was able to figure out who the other parent probably is.”

Keith frowned, eyes widening. “Coran? How would he be able to do _that_?”

Shiro took in a deep breath; this would be the tricky part. “So it turns out you're not the first paladin to end up with a mystery pregnancy after leaving Voltron.”

“...Tell me you're joking. _Please_ tell me you're joking.”

“Hey, would you rather be left in the dark?”

Keith folded his arms and looked to the side, clearly reluctant. “...No.” He paused. “So tell me what's up with this pregnancy thing.”

Shiro leaned back in his chair. “When I told everyone – and don't get mad at me Keith, they literally dragged it out of me – that you didn't know who the other parent was and that the DNA test was beyond inconclusive, Coran and Allura both thought it sounded familiar and Coran went looking through the Castle's records. He found a lot of recorded instances of paladins who had particularly strong bonds with their lions becoming changed in some way after leaving Voltron. New skills, abilities, physical features. And, a couple times, if the bond was really strong... pregnant.”

“That's...” Keith trailed off, looking shell-shocked.

“...In fact, Red Paladins are the only ones with multiple recorded instances of pregnancy. And we all agree that it's pretty obvious how she felt about you.”

Keith ran clawed fingers through his hair. “So you're saying I'm pregnant because the Red Lion likes to _knock up her paladins?_ ”

“...Yes. That is what I am saying.”

“That is _insane!_ ”

“Look,” Shiro tried to comfort, “It could be worse. Some of the... changes? Gifts? Recorded were terrible, or at the very least ill thought out. One paladin retired because their lower appendages got blown off, and woke up one morning with a pair of legs-”

“That doesn't sound terrible.”

“-They were the hind legs of lion, awkwardly jammed on where eight tentacles used to be.”

“Okay I take that back, that's awful.”

“Another, one of Allura's ancestors, was turned into a ghost. He had been haunting the royal palace for thousands of years by the time Altea was destroyed, and as far as anyone knows he's still there, drifting in space.”

“That's... that's not even... There's 'oops I gave you the wrong legs' and 'oops _have fun with your eternal torment_ '.”

“Which is why Pidge thinks that immortality may have been the so-called 'gift' in that case. On the plus side, Lance is swearing up and down that he's not going to lose so much as a finger because he doesn't want to be a furry.”

Keith threw back his head and laughed. Shiro, who knew exactly what mental image Keith found so funny, started laughing as well. And as he laughed, Shiro could see the tension melt away from his frame, which in turn left Shiro more at ease. “Oh man, I would _pay_ to see that. Only not really, because I don't want Lance to lose any of his limbs, but in an abstract sense...” he trailed off, falling back into chuckles.

Once Keith's laughs had died down again, Shiro continued. “Anyway, Coran's putting together a file on everything he can find about Lion-induced pregnancies. I'll send it on when it's done, and then you can share it with Ardis. The short version, so far, is that it's going to be no different from a pregnancy resulting from more... conventional methods.”

“Thanks Shiro. I... I don't know what I'd do without you.”

“You'd manage, I think,” Shiro encouraged. “You're strong, and stubborn. If anyone I know could decide to power through a situation like this alone and succeed, it's you.”

Keith gave Shiro a shy smile, and Shiro was reassured. Everything was going to be fine.

* * *

“You are in _so much_ trouble Keith!”

Keith couldn't see the paladins yet, but he could definitely hear Lance. He was surprised he'd been able to fend them off for so long, and he knew he had Shiro to thank, a lot, for that. Shiro, to be quite honest, could probably be considered a god among men, and Keith had probably won the surrogate older brother lottery given all that he had put him through without the smallest complaint or hint of resistance.

Still. It was time to face the music. He stood from the couch he was sitting on and started walking towards the open door that the noise was coming through. “You can stop shouting, I can hear you just fine. I'm pregnant, not deaf.”

“Man, do I have some words – _oh my god you have a baby bump!_ ”

Keith stepped back automatically. “I – yes? What were you expecting?”

“Be patient with him Keith, we only just found out several weeks ago.” Allura smiled widely as she said this. “It's a bit of a shock, since we hadn't known about it from the start.”

“Seeing _is_ believing,” Pidge said. “Speaking of seeing... are those breasts?”

Keith folded his arms defensively out of habit, which only served to accentuate the two still rather small bumps that had grown up along with the third. “Apparently a galra's breasts develop during their first pregnancy.”

“Wow. This whole 'whups it was supposed to be a girl' thing must wild.”

Keith sent Shiro a panicked look. “Did you tell them _everything?_ ”

“Hey, I'd like to see _you_ come up with an explanation on the fly for Lance saying that he saw you naked in the showers once.”

Hunk was suddenly up in Keith's personal space, a hand reaching out. “Can I...?”

Keith frowned. “Can you what?” Hunk wiggled his fingers. Keith continued to stare at him in confusion.

“He wants to rub his hands all over your stomach, because people who like babies are weird,” Pidge explained.

“What? No!” Keith slapped his hand away. Hunk withdrew it, looking hurt. “Don't touch me!”

“At least he asked. Once, when I was out at the mall with Mom and a friend of hers who was showing, Mom's friend ended up punching someone because she was that tired of people she didn't know just touching her whenever.”

“Have you felt it move yet?”

Lance beat Keith to answering Hunk. “Don't be ridiculous, it's probably too early for that.”

“I know that,” Keith said, “But how do _you_ know that?”

“My mom and like a million older sisters and aunts and cousins and step-aunts and might-as-well-be-aunts. And none of them have any filter, because way too many of them are like Hunk and the rest indulge them.”

Keith noticed Shiro straighten as something came into view behind him. Keith turned and saw Kolivan. “Ah, Kolivan,” Shiro greeted.

Kolivan stared for a moment, then nodded slightly. “Paladins.” He continued on quickly, leaving silence in his wake.

“Hey Keith,” Hunk said quietly, “Maybe I just forgot what he's like, and you're the one who's actually been here, so. Was Kolivan acting strange just now, or is that just me?”

Keith sighed. “No... He's been weird around me ever since I got taken off the mission roster because of the baby. I'd ask him, but.” He shrugged, at a loss for an explanation.

“Well that's a dick move of him,” Lance said bluntly.

“He's probably got his reasons.”

“Still a dick move. And maybe I'm missing some context, but from where I'm standing it seems pretty obvious what's going on.”

“Last time you thought something was obvious, Lance, you accused Shiro of having a secret lovechild with a Blade.”

Keith guffawed. “ _What?_ ”

“But I have to back Lance up on this,” Pidge continued. “Unless there's something we don't know, there's probably a high probability that he's mad at you for being with the Blade for less than a year before going out of commission for however long. Even once you do start taking missions again, you're going to need a babysitter. From Kolivan's point of view, you probably didn't contribute enough before you started, well, basically mooching.”

“I don't think that's it Pidge,” Shiro argued. “I'm sure Keith's right and it's something else that's going on.”

Keith wanted to agree with Shiro. But now that Lance had pointed it out, it seemed like a strong possibility, strong enough that he was surprised it hadn't occurred to him before. That Kolivan thought he was wasting resources by having a baby.

“I'm tired of standing around in this hallway,” Lance said. “Keith, where's the best places to hang around here?”

Keith's quarters weren't nearly big enough for everyone, so they ended up in the smaller lounge Keith had been waiting for them in. There was no end to the others' questions, and Keith was starting to regret having kept the pregnancy from them just because he wouldn't have had to deal with them all at once.

“Do you know if it's a boy or girl yet?”

“Hunk, it's too-”

“Lance,” Hunk cut him off this time, “You can't keep assuming that this is like a normal human pregnancy, because it's not, it's a human-galra-giant robot pregnancy. Maybe Keith has known whether it's a boy or a girl the entire time.”

“I don't,” Keith said. “And I'm not going to until after its born. I'm not going to say it's a boy or a girl until I can be absolutely sure, at least as sure as you can be with a baby. Humans and galra look close enough to opposite from the outside, and who knows what giant robots look like. I'm not going to believe a single thing about the baby's sex until I can see what it's got with my own eyes.”

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

“Pidge, I'm not going to just assume that my baby is transgender. That's too similar to my own mess, which was _definitely_ paved with good intentions.”

“I'm not saying you should! I'm just saying, gender-free child rearing is a thing.”

Keith took a deep breath. “Pidge. I get where you're coming from. But please understand where I'm coming from when I say that this baby is going to get a gender and they are going to be raised as that gender until and if they say otherwise. I'm not going to say correct because I know better, I know so, _so_ much better, I am _intimately aware_ of how terrible the idea of correct gender is because I was assigned the incorrect gender _literally_ , but that's one of the things I want to be better for my baby than it was for me. That they don't grow up feeling wrong because of their body.”

“That's... not necessarily how it works.”

“Yeah, well, I can _try_.”

In the silence that followed, Keith realized that he was hugging his stomach, almost hunched over it protectively. Lance was the next to speak. “I was going to slide this into casual conversation, but it seems like as good a time as any. Are you still a guy, or has that changed?”

Keith had to stop and think about that one. “...Yes. I think. I've had more pressing concerns than a gender crisis.”

Lance nodded. “Totally understandable, totally understandable. Just give us a holler if that changes, okay? 'Cause you're clearly already uncomfortable enough with this-” he gestured vaguely at Keith “-everything. Whatever we can do to help, man.” The others all echoed the sentiment.

“Thanks guys,” Keith smiled. “You're making me wonder why I was worried about telling you, which is... definitely good.”

“Of course it's good, we're awesome.”

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter right here is the reason I should have started posting this before season five was released.

In the end, it took Keith two weeks after the visit from the paladins to work up the courage to talk to Kolivan. Two weeks of worries and doubts worming their way deep into his chest, making him wonder if he'd done the right thing after all, until he was half ready to pack up and run back to the Castle without so much as saying goodbye.

That realization was the final push to get him to talk to Kolivan. He found him in the Blade's command center, thankfully alone. Kolivan glanced up at his entrance, then looked back down at the charts and reports. “Keith. Can I help you?”

Keith stood stiffly. “I came to apologize.”

Kolivan didn't look back up. “What for?”

“For wasting Blade resources.”

This time Kolivan did look up, and his eyes stayed on Keith. “What resources would those be?”

“The ones that I'm using while not being an active Blade because I'm having a baby.”

Kolivan turned to face him head on, attention fully removed from his reports. “Keith. You are not the first person to have a child on this very base, let alone within the Blade as a whole.”

“Oh.” Keith swallowed. “Then I want you to tell me why you _are_ angry at me, if it's not that.”

Kolivan closed his eyes briefly, and when he opened them again he would not meet Keith's. “I am not angry at you. I have simply been... considering my regrets.”

“And what does that have to do with me? You've been treating me weird ever since I got pulled from the mission roster.”

“Since I found out you were with child.”

“...Well?” Keith demanded when it became clear that Kolivan wasn't going to elaborate.

“They are... to do with the last child born on this base.” Kolivan sighed, long and sad. “I was never meant to be leader of the Blade of Marmora. This is something that all other Blades know. But you, a newcomer who does not know what Marmora means, do not.

“Marmora was the name of a martyr, many many generations ago. Her daughter started the Blade of Marmora in her honor, and took the name Marmora herself. Leadership of the Blade was passed down through an unbroken line of daughters, all called Marmora, until the last Marmora died several years ago.”

“She didn't have any daughters?”

“She did, but we did not know where she was. You see, a number of years before she died, our last leader and her first husband, who was also a Blade, crashed on a distant world. By time they were recovered, she had taken a local as her second husband and was with child.”

Keith snorted. “That must've been awkward.”

Kolivan gave him an unreadable look. “It is acceptable for galra women to take as many husbands as they like.”

Keith glanced away, embarrassed. “Oh. Then, she was married to both of them?”

“Yes. But as our leader, she could not stay with her second husband, and so she and her first husband returned to the Blade. Her first husband became the second father of the child, carrying her after first labor.”

“The last baby born on this base?” Keith guessed.

Kolivan nodded. “Yes. But she took strongly after her first father, much more strongly than most mixed species galra, and was premature and severely underweight for a newborn galra. Because of this... well, she was clearly unable to someday take over from her mother, and so she was sent to live with her first father on his planet where it was safe.”

Kolivan took a deep breath, looked Keith straight in the eye, and said, “It never occurred to me that you might be that child. After all, it was a daughter that was sent away, not a son.”

Keith was speechless. Kolivan gave him several moments to collect himself, then continued. “We looked for you, after your mother died. Now I know why we couldn't find any records of you. We were looking for a girl named Marmora, not a boy named Keith.” He looked away again. “My regret stems from the fact that, if I had only told you this sooner, if someone had only questioned you on your origins sooner, then you may have had the chance to know your second father as exactly that, instead of simply another Blade.”

Keith felt like he'd been punched. “He died after I joined the Blade? I _knew_ him?”

“Before you joined the Blade properly, but yes, you did know him. There was a reason Antok immediately accused you of stealing your blade, instead of considering that you may have come to it through legitimate means.”

Keith couldn't breathe.

Next thing he knew he was practically on the floor, legs limp underneath him, only Kolivan's quick response having stopped him from collapsing completely. Kolivan's usual frown deepened. “I perhaps should have told you to sit down first.” He gently lowered Keith the rest of the way to sit on the floor, but did not remove his arms from around him.

“Antok was my father,” Keith breathed.

“Your second father, yes.”

“Did he know? Do you think he knew?”

“No. He would have said something if he even suspected it. He loved you dearly. He wanted to keep you with us. It was your mother who decided you were too sickly to stay and decided to send you away.” Kolivan winced. “Another reason I did not think that you could be her. It seems we were wrong about what constituted a healthy newborn human. _Very_ wrong.”

“I...” Keith trailed off. What _could_ he say?

Kolivan let him process for a good long while before he spoke again. “Even if you never return to the field, if you decide you do not want to risk leaving your child without a parent, you will _always_ have a place among the Blade of Marmora. And, if you decide you wish, I would be honored to mentor you with the ultimate goal of transferring leadership to you. I will not pressure you on this though. It is entirely your choice. And it is an offer that will remain open for as long as we both live.”

Keith swallowed, voice rough. “D-does everyone know? Did everyone figure it out and no one told me?”

“There are some who may have guessed. But few saw you before you were sent away, and even fewer knew where to and what your first father was.”

“...I think I want to be alone for a bit.”

Kolivan nodded once. “Understandable. Do you need help getting to your quarters?”

“...I don't know.”

“Very well.” Kolivan helped Keith to stand, then kept a hand on his shoulder as they walked through the base towards the sleeping quarters.

Keith knew what Kolivan had said, that it wasn't widely known who he was, who his _parents_ were. But it still felt like every Blade they passed was staring through him, knowingly, assessingly, judgingly.

* * *

Keith was... subdued at his next appointment. Subdued in a way that concerned Ardis. God knew she'd seen him at his worst during this roller coaster, but the dead way he held himself and responded to her was somehow worse than his worst meltdowns.

Ardis didn't pull out the bottle of pills she was planning to give him just yet. “Keith. What's wrong?” He didn't respond. “Do you not want to talk about it?” Head shake. “To me?” Head shake. “To anyone?” Another head shake. “ _Should_ you talk about it with someone?” Pause. Nod. “A little bird told me that two weeks ago Kolivan had to help you back to your quarters.”

“He didn't have to,” Keith said quietly. “He just did.”

“Because he was concerned about you I'm sure. But I assumed the fact that I didn't hear it from him meant that you were all right.” Keith didn't respond. Ardis sighed, opened the cabinet, and pulled out the pills. “These are the pills that will prevent you from going into labor. You _must_ take them every day. Missing just one day puts you at risk. Studies have suggested that this risk is increased the further along you are. They're not completely conclusive, but it's still a potential factor in whether you will be able to carry to full term. What I want to know is, will you take these on your own or do I need to make you come here every day to make sure you don't miss a dose?”

Keith's continued silence was being a problem. Ardis couldn't believe it, but she might actually have preferred screaming, crying Keith who needed watching because she was vaguely concerned he would try to perform a self-induced abortion with the nearest sharp object. “Keith. Talk to me.”

“I... should go back to Voltron.”

“No you shouldn't,” Ardis said firmly. “And you know why you shouldn't. What's actually going on?” She gave him plenty of time to respond before prodding, “Did Kolivan say something to you that made you feel like you needed to leave, because if he did, he's wrong and I'm going to go yell at him for you.”

“No, not that... he told me...”

It was like pulling teeth with this boy, sometimes. “What did he tell you, Keith?”

“...My mother.”

“Your...” Something clicked in Ardis' head, and the pieces started slotting together. She tilted her head, looking at Keith in a new light. “I'll be damned.” Keith's eyes darted up at her, full of pain, before heading away again. “I can't believe I didn't... I _delivered_ you, of course I should have figured it out for myself.”

“You did?”

Ardis nodded. “Yep. You were the smallest baby I ever did, slid right out. We'd gotten a neonatal unit in preparation because you were so small in the ultrasounds, and Marmora and Antok never left your side for the first several days. Marmora didn't want to let anyone see you until you were stronger, and I think Antok was worried that you would die if anyone so much as breathed on you.”

“...If it makes you feel any better, I guess I was small for a human baby too.”

Keith was responding; good. “We had you with us for two months. By that time Marmora and Antok were holding you and nursing you and all that, but you spent the rest of your time in the unit. But once two months had passed, your development was still so incomparable to most galra that Marmora and Antok decided to send you away. It broke their hearts. I think they were only just starting to consider having another child when Marmora died.”

“How did she die?”

Ardis found herself shrugging. “The same way most Blades do.”

Keith didn't immediately respond, and this time Ardis decided to wait for whatever he would say instead of prodding some words. “You should keep them.” Before Ardis could figure out that non sequitur he elaborated, “The pills. So that I come to take them every day. You should keep them.”

Ardis smiled and nodded. “Okay. If that's what you think we need to do.” And if, after Keith left the appointment, Ardis sent a message to Voltron, well. She was only looking out for him.

* * *

Keith was not taking Kolivan up on his offer of mentorship. He had no intention of ever leading the Blade, just as he had never wanted to lead Voltron. At this point he was fairly sure that he wanted to go back to Voltron after he gave birth anyway. He had started spending his days in the command center helping Kolivan because he was bored, that's all.

So he ignored the looks Kolivan gave him, the ones that said, 'This is important knowledge, so remember it.' He hadn't asked Kolivan to train him, he had just offered to help, and so he felt okay _not_ telling Kolivan that he _wasn't_ training him. If he told him, then Kolivan might stop letting him help. Keith knew he was mad at Kolivan, but he also knew that he didn't want too much time alone even more.

The paladins, meanwhile, had apparently decided to make up for time lost because they didn't know he was pregnant by visiting as often as they could. Keith wondered if part of it was because they could tell that something was up with him, that he wasn't doing too good emotionally. He started to suspect it even more when, at the third visit in as many weeks, he asked, “I understand why you guys want to spend a lot of time with me, but shouldn't you be out saving the universe or something?”

“Yeah, and you're part of the universe,” Lance replied, as if that was obvious. Which yeah, it was once Keith thought about it, but he was just one person. Voltron could be doing a lot more good saving planets than giving him moral support.

Keith's next crisis happened shortly after that though, so maybe there was something in what Lance had said.

Ardis, ever in tune with her patients' needs, had noticed an issue that Keith had been staunchly ignoring, and so she acquired some bras for him and offered to show him how to put them on. He had snatched them from her hands and snapped that he could do it on his own. It did take a little trial and error once he got back to his quarters, but it wasn't like they were alien technology, they were _bras_. They weren't even fancy space bras; they looked just like the ones he'd seen in stores back on Earth.

And then he caught sight of himself in the small mirror in his room.

It was small; when he stood in front of it it was just large enough to show his head. So he backed up to the far wall to get as much of himself in the reflection that he could. He wasn't sure he wanted it to be bigger, because he wasn't sure he could deal with what little he _could_ see.

He looked like a woman.

His hair, already on the long side, had gone ignored and was quite a ways past what he would consider desperately in need of a cut. The bras Ardis had given him were plain, but they were still _bras_ , holding up breasts that were preparing to feed an infant. His reflection went just low enough to show the curved top of the belly of someone eight months pregnant. And the feminine facial features, the ones that he had been teased about once upon a time... well, they made a bit more sense now.

He suddenly cast about, looking for the pair of scissors that he knew was around here somewhere. But then, just as suddenly, he stopped. He approached the mirror again. He started fiddling with his hair, holding it in various styles. Two ponytails, one. Up high, down low. Wrapped into a bun. If he twisted it and held it up with a clip, it would look like this.

“Janet,” he told the mirror, still holding up his hair. “Amy. Evelyn. Patty. Renee. Bea. Fiona. Isabel. Olivia. Emily. Caitlin. Kayla.” He tilted his head at his reflection, frowning.

He put on a shirt and went to his desk to make a call. But he didn't call Shiro, for once. He called Pidge. “Hey Keith, what's up?” she asked upon answering.

“Am I transgender?”

Pidge was clearly thrown for a loop by the question. “That's... not generally something you ask someone else.”

“Well it's not like I can just google it. You're the only person I know who can help me out here.”

Pidge bit her lip. “Okay then. Let's start with why you're asking.”

“I've got a cisgender girl's body, but I'm a guy. But I was raised a boy, because they thought I was a boy, ish. Penis, intersex standards, yeah. But am I actually a guy, or do I just think I'm a guy because of that and I'm actually a girl? And if I am actually a girl, would I still be transgender because I was raised as a boy?”

Pidge made calming motions with her hands, which was understandable given how Keith's words had sped up as he talked. “Okay, slow down Keith. Forget the 'does this count as trans' for now. How do _you_ feel?”

“About what?”

“Being a boy or a girl, or something else maybe.”

“I don't know, because I've never felt like I had to think about it before, but now I do, and I don't know, I could be a guy, or I could not be, but is me being a guy even valid?”

“ _Absolutely_ ,” Pidge said, with rock steady conviction. “If it's how you feel, then it's valid.”

“But how do I know it's how I feel?”

“That's not...” Pidge sighed, and ran a hand through her hair. “I can't read your mind. You're the only one who knows how you feel.”

Keith mulled that over. “I look like a woman,” he finally said.

“Yeah, you kinda do these days.”

“If I look like a woman, and I do woman-y things, that makes me a woman, right?”

“Wrong. If you look like a woman and do woman-y things, but say that you're a man, you're a man.”

“That seems... wrong.”

“Because cis people are dicks, and no one told you this before, probably.” Pidge sighed again, probably at the frown on Keith's face. “Look at me. What do you see?”

“A girl.”

“And before I said I was a girl, what did you see?”

“...A boy. But that's different, feminine stuff is-”

“It's called fragile masculinity, and I would not be remotely surprised if you have it bad. You grew up a boy with feminine features, so yeah, you're going to be super conscious of how you're presenting. Believe me, I went through the same thing.”

Keith found himself staring hard at Pidge, trying to find cracks. “How are you so confident now?”

“Several years of practice. But if we're being honest...” Keith saw her arm muscles twitch under her sleeves, indicating that she was fiddling with her hands below the camera. “I didn't really get there until I detransitioned to get into the Garrison. At that point I was confident enough in my identity, and the uniform was the same anyway, that I realized that it was really only the social aspect that was bothering me. So now I'm comfortable being like this. I'll probably get flak for it when we go back to Earth, but,” she shrugged, “Haters gonna hate.”

Keith twisted a hand in his hair, feeling the length. “So what I'm getting from this is that I just have to think about it. A lot.”

“No 'just' about it, but yeah, that's the basics. But Keith,” she added, “If the idea of being a woman is making you freak out, then you're probably not a woman. Sometimes it's just that simple.”

“So if...” Keith trailed off, looking for words to explain with that wouldn't leave him feeling vulnerable. “If I don't have a massive problem with how I look, then that doesn't actually mean anything.”

Pidge hummed. “Do you feel comfortable telling me why you're thinking about this now?”

“I realized that I was desperately in need of a haircut, but then I started wondering if I actually _did_ need a haircut.” He fell silent, wondering if he wanted to admit to anything else.

“See, that's what I'm talking about with the fragile masculinity thing. Plenty of guys have hair as long as yours is now, but because you feel like you don't measure up in other ways you think you need to have shorter hair. If you were a rugged mountain man, would you still think that you needed to cut your hair?”

Keith tried to imagine that. “That is so far beyond not me that's not something I can even picture.” He frowned. “But like, guys with long hair that I can think of, they're all pretty masculine in other ways.”

Pidge splayed her hands out. “Fragile masculinity!”

Keith found himself smiling. “Okay. You've... you've definitely helped.”

“That's what I'm here for.”

Keith was about to say something else, but a sudden sensation had him rubbing his stomach. “Oof, calm down you,” he told it.

Pidge grinned. “Munchkin being active today?”

“More like when is it _not_ being active.”

“It must be getting excited about getting to come out soon.”

Keith scratched the back of his neck sheepishly. “Actually...” Had he really forgotten to tell them?

Pidge narrowed her eyes. “Actually what?”

Keith tugged at a clump of hair. “Galra are pregnant for fifteen months. We have no idea when the baby's due.”

Pidge was definitely shocked and concerned. “But aren't you taking something to prevent you from going into labor too early? How will you know when to stop?”

Keith shrugged. “Same way non-mixed galra do when they take it: constant pain from horrific cramping as my body tries desperately to contain something way too big for it.” Pidge winced. “Then I get a c-section, because there's no way I'll be able to deliver something that big naturally without smashing my pelvis into multiple pieces and possibly bleeding out. Non-mixed galra get c-sections in this situation too, and compared to them I'm _tiny_.”

“...You did know about this when you decided to keep the baby, right?”

Keith chuckled. “Most of it, yeah. The difference in gestation lengths ended up coming out accidentally while we were talking about due dates, but the rest I knew about from the beginning. Little sucker's going to put me through pregnancy hell.” He patted his stomach fondly.

* * *

Keith knew that Pidge had told the others what he'd told her when, the next time they saw him, Lance put both hands on his shoulders and, looking like he was giving condolences at a funeral, said, “I am so sorry.”

* * *

“Cut them off,” Keith said before he'd even fully entered Medical.

Ardis's gaze was torn from the charts she'd been reviewing, and she blinked at Keith. Cut them off? Cut what off? Clearly she'd misheard him. “I'm sorry?”

Keith gestured at his chest. “My breasts. I don't want them. Cut 'em off.”

Ardis sighed, wondering distantly what Keith's next ridiculous, probably human-related request would be. “No. One, I'm not performing elective surgery on someone nine months pregnant. Two, I avoid performing elective surgery period because I'm a multi-purpose rebel doctor, not a dedicated surgeon.”

“But...” Keith started, but then trailed off. He could clearly see the logic in what Ardis had said. Ardis had started to look back at her charts, content that the conversation was over, when Keith said, “What about after? Once the baby's born. Could you at least refer me to someone?”

Ardis would like to go to Earth one day, if only to get some context for some of Keith's weirder behavior. “And why would you want a double mastectomy?”

“I'm a guy. I don't want them.”

Ardis stared, hard. “...You've lost me.”

“Guys... don't... have breasts?”

Ardis mentally translated that to ' _human_ guys don't have breasts'. “Given how your sexual characteristics are thoroughly galra, you would grow breasts during the gestation of your first child regardless of your primary sex characteristics. Didn't we talk about this?”

“Well, yes, but, that's not how it is on Earth, and so that's not how I'm used to it being, and they make me really uncomfortable.”

“Physical discomfort is-”

“Not physically,” Keith interrupted her.

Ardis went to medical school for this. “...They'll shrink some after you finish nursing anyway. If you still want a double mastectomy then, then we can talk about it.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guess what! You're valid.


	4. Chapter 4

Shiro finally brought the responsible onesie to their next visit. “I don't know how it'll work with a tail though,” he said as he handed it over. “I wasn't thinking of the possibility that the baby might not be entirely human-shaped.”

“You weren't the only one,” Keith grumbled. “I'm sure it can be altered or something though.” He unfolded the onesie, and could immediately see why Shiro had bought it. It might as well have been monogrammed with 'Keith's Baby'.

“I can do it,” Lance offered. “Once the baby comes out and we know exactly where the extra hole needs to be.” He made a face. “But also, like, how do you even diaper a baby with a tail? I can't think of a way to do it that wouldn't be horribly messy to the point of pointlessness.”

“I'm sure there's a way...” Keith trailed off, as several things slowly dawned on him.

It must have shown on his face, because everyone started staring at him with varying amounts of concern. “Dude, are you okay?” Hunk asked. “Your eyes just turned into saucers.”

“ _I have never spent any time around a baby before in my life_.”

Lance whistled low. “Ooh boy,” Pidge said.

Shiro clapped him on the shoulder. “You'll do fine, I'm sure.”

“So you're saying that all this time, Ardis has never talked to you about what happens _after_ the birth?”

Keith was pretty sure that he should be sticking his head between his knees and trying not to hyperventilate, except for the fact that he had a giant belly in the way. “It's all been physical stuff! Like postpartum bleeding and my body readjusting and how nursing will hurt at first! Not like, calming down a baby or how to change a diaper or when milestones will happen! Can we even know when they'll start walking and talking? What if my baby has a developmental disability and doesn't start talking when they're supposed to but we can't tell because we don't know _when_ they're supposed to?”

“ _Calm down_ ,” Shiro commanded, and Keith obeyed out of trained instinct. “Talk to Ardis about this next time you see her. Anything she can't help you with, I'm sure she knows someone who can.”

“Shiro,” Keith said slowly, “This is a rebel base, not a daycare, and they don't know shit about human babies.”

“And that's what we're here for,” Lance said. “Or at least that's what _I'm_ here for. I don't know how qualified the rest of you are.”

Pidge tilted her head. “If you don't know anything about human babies, how do you know _they_ don't know anything about human babies?”

Keith's mouth snapped shut.

Lance, unfortunately, was too perceptive for his own good, or at least Keith's good, when he wasn't pretending not to be. “Keith,” he said suggestively, “Is there something you'd like to tell us?”

“No.”

Hunk tried to pull him into a hug, something hindered by Keith's unwieldy shape. “Tell us whatever you want to, or don't tell us whatever you don't want to; we love you all the same.”

“Thanks Hunk.”

* * *

Sometime during month eleven, Keith pulled his stupidly huge girth out of bed to call Shiro. At this point hauling himself around had become significantly tiring and he had tried to call it an early night, but it wasn't working so well. He knew that Shiro would still be awake so he didn't have to feel bad about waking him up. Unfortunately, Shiro had to answer just as Keith winced and rubbed at his stomach. Shiro smiled sympathetically. “Kicking?”

“No, cramping. But it's not so bad yet,” Keith reassured.

“How you doing otherwise?”

Keith shook his head. “I'm _so_ ready to be done with this, but I've got another four months to go if I want to make it to term. I'm not sure how I'll be able to even move at that point.”

“Galra men manage it well enough.”

“Galra men are nearly twice my size.”

Shiro laughed. “Fair enough. But that's what you have a qualified doctor for.”

“Shiro, my 'qualified doctor' once said that she wished she could send me to a _real_ obstetrician. Other than GP stuff, she doesn't do things that she can pawn off on other doctors with actual specialties, and usually babies count. The last baby she delivered was, well, me.” Keith folded his arms and looked aside, wondering whether or not he'd meant to admit that. He decided to plow on before Shiro could say anything. “She takes care of things that can't be explained, like blaster injuries. Unfortunately for me, a weirdass, vaguely human pregnancy counts as unexplainable.”

Shiro recovered quickly, and managed to not press where Keith didn't want him to. Mostly. “What about you, why did she have to deliver you?”

Keith gestured at his entire self. “Galra hybrid pregnancies? Totally okay. Galra hybrid pregnancies with an unknown species that hasn't even left their own solar system? Not so much.” Keith sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “She's doing the best she can, and I trust her to not outright accidentally kill either of us, but she did flub me a little, so I'm not entirely sure how much confidence I should have.”

“Oh?”

Keith appreciated that Shiro hadn't straight up asked for the details and had given him a way out. There was no way he was going to tell him everything, not when _he_ hadn't even figured out how he felt about it even months later, but... “Galra babies are apparently a lot more developed when they're born than human babies.”

“Makes sense, since the pregnancy is so much longer.”

“I guess so, but that can't be all of it, because Ardis and my mother looked at me and apparently saw a worryingly small baby with serious developmental delays. So I was given to my dad, who saw a perfectly normal baby, more or less. Intersex, yeah, but not liable to suddenly get sick and die any more than any other baby.”

Shiro snorted. “Oops.”

“Between that and the sex thing, no one figured out that I was that baby until I got pregnant.”

Shiro wetted his lip. “Sooo... you've been able to find out about your mother?”

Keith tried to pretend that it hadn't affected him as strongly as it had, though he knew Shiro could see right through him. “She died. That's all that really matters.”

“Keith-”

“I don't want to talk about it.”

Shiro took a deep breath. “Okay. Okay then. Just. Know that I'm here for you, and the rest of the paladins are too.”

“I guess they tried to look for me after she died, and when they couldn't find me they'd assumed I'd died too sometime before,” he threw out a tidbit. He sighed deeply. “I've been trying to put together timelines, and I'm pretty sure she died after my dad did. So I would've been in the foster system, and even if they did look there there was still the fact that my file said mostly-boy, not girl.”

Silence fell, half awkward, half companionable. Keith knew that the companionable part came from Shiro, and the awkward part came from him. Shiro leaned on one of his chair's armrests, looking relaxed. “So,” he said, “You've been kind of hinting that you want to come back to the Castle after the birth. Have you talked to Ardis about that?”

Keith nodded. “Yeah. She's not... especially happy about it, but she doesn't see why I can't if the baby's healthy and I come back for regular checkups. She understands why I don't want to stay. I'm a lot closer to you guys than any of the other Blades, and there's some... other things that have made staying here unpleasant. I probably would've come back months ago, but, baby.”

“Your mother?” Shiro guessed.

Keith rested his chin in his hands. “Yeah. I'm not sure how I feel about it, and being here isn't helping, I think. I think I need some distance, away from people who... know things, and, uh, expectations...” he trailed off.

“Now that they know, they expect you to be more like her,” Shiro guessed.

“Something like that.”

After that, conversation fell to safer, more mundane topics. By the time topics ran out both of them were yawning, and signed off to hopefully deep sleeps.

* * *

Keith probably would've kicked in the door to Medical if he was still capable of it, and if the doors on the base were the kind of doors you could kick in. “I'm done with this!” he declared loudly.

The Blade whose broken arm Ardis was currently examining quickly excused himself. Ardis leveled Keith with a glare, arms folded. Keith couldn't bring himself to care. “Done with what, exactly?”

“Being pregnant! My body is done, I'm done, and the baby is definitely done. There's no way this baby is not done at this point. I have been pregnant for _four months longer_ than humans and I'm done. And if I ever go back to Earth, I never want to hear about a pregnant person complaining that they feel like a whale, _ever_. I'm pretty sure that if this baby is allowed to get bigger, I will actually explode.”

“The ultrasounds show that your baby's development is on track-”

“For galra,” Keith interrupted. “But I'm not galra, and my baby isn't galra, my baby is half _giant fucking robot._ ” He took a deep breath, realized that he didn't want to be standing anymore at all, and gently collapsed onto the nearest seat. “Look. This isn't spur of the moment, oh it's totally going to be okay. I've been talking with Lance, he knows a lot about human babies, about infant development, and human infants are a lot more helpless than galra infants. Galra babies are born a lot more developed, and reach milestones a lot sooner. And since my baby is just as much human as galra, the fact that they're underdeveloped by galra standards means squat.”

Ardis narrowed her eyes. “Is Lance a qualified doctor?”

“Well no, but-”

“Then I don't see why he would know better than me.”

“Yeah well _you_ thought I was going to _die!_ ”

Keith and Ardis stared at each other for a long moment. “I can read between the lines,” Keith finally said. “I've been paying attention, reading old Blade reports that I have access to. If my health really was as bad as you all thought it was, then I stood just as much of a chance here as I would've on Earth, probably even more because of the vast technology differences. You didn't send me to my dad to keep me safe. You sent me to my dad so that he could have time with me before I died.”

Ardis closed her eyes.

“Did you know that Kolivan gave me top clearance after he offered to train me for leadership? I read the debriefing from the mission to find me. Except that's not what it was, was it? It wasn't to find me, it was to find out _what happened_ to me. To find my dad and tell him that my mother was dead, and to find out what happened to me to give Antok closure. They fucking, they fucking _found me_ , it's there in the _goddamn report_ , that they learned that my dad was survived by his son Keith, but they didn't bother to look closer because they didn't give a damn about some human kid named Keith, they just wanted to know about Marmora. Everyone was _so sure_ I was dead that it took me having a goddamn baby for them to figure out what had been staring them in the face the whole damn time.”

Keith huffed and folded his arms as best he could. “Kolivan and Antok probably forgot entirely about that Keith, if they ever cared to learn in the first place, because who cares about some human kid named Keith? Nah, they just wanted the kid with the right lineage.”

“...You've been holding in a lot, haven't you,” Ardis eventually said. Keith didn't respond. He didn't have anything more to say. He wasn't overly interested in any explanations either – he already knew exactly what had happened, and he trusted, well, hoped, that Ardis wouldn't try to make excuses.

Keith had tried to not let himself dwell on what-ifs. What was done was done. He hadn't thought there would be a report, that it would count as an actual mission. A sleepless night had led him to go looking to find out how his mother had died. It had been late enough and he had been stupid enough to go trawling through the spiderweb of cross-references in a way that probably counted as emotional self-harm, until he'd ended up reading the report from Antok's first mission after his wife had died. Keith had initially thought it was way too soon, that Antok should still be grieving... then he'd figured out what the mission actually _was_.

So what if a purple alien had shown up when he was nine years old to tell him that he was his father and that he was actually a girl? Didn't happen, didn't matter. Didn't matter didn't matter didn't matter.

Ardis shifted uncomfortably. “Put me in contact with Lance. I'll discuss it with him, and then get back to you with my verdict.”

* * *

The paladins had, of course, been hoping to be there for the birth. But as everyone should have expected, they were delayed by a distress call. In hindsight they knew the exact moment the baby was born, because the Red Lion had suddenly tried to hightail it out of the dogfight and it took a lot of pleading from Lance to get her to stay and do her part.

So when they arrived at the Marmora base, Pidge and Hunk still smelling slightly like they had just repaired a ruptured fuel line, Keith was leaning against a large pile of pillows and staring in dazed awe at the sleeping baby in his arms. Or possibly drugged awe. Probably a bit of both. “Hey guys,” Keith said, voice uncharacteristically high-pitched. “Say hello to Baby Girl Kogane.” Everyone crowded around to commence cooing. Kolivan, who was standing in a corner looking suspiciously like a guard dog, started to react, then made himself not.

“She's amazing,” Shiro said. “You did good Keith.”

“Can I hold her?”

“No, my baby,” Keith told Hunk, tightening his grip like he thought Hunk was going to grab her. The movement woke her and she yawned and wiggled before opening her eyes and staring around at everyone.

“Aww, she has your purple eyes!” Lance exclaimed.

“Keith's technicolor dream baby,” Pidge smirked.

Keith ran a gentle hand along the baby's scalp, smoothing wisps of unnaturally bright red hair. “Well, her mom is the _Red_ Lion. Also, she is absolutely not a dream baby. I'm never doing that again. I look like a deflated balloon under all this.”

“What's her name?”

Keith froze. “Um.”

“...You forgot to pick a name,” Shiro said, making it sound like a chastisement.

“...No?”

“ _Keith_.”

Kolivan spoke up. “If I may make a suggestion-”

“No you may not,” Keith interrupted, leaving no room for argument.

The paladins looked between Keith and Kolivan, sensing tension. Lance took the opportunity of Keith's distraction to reach forward and let the baby grab one of his fingers in her tiny fist. He then waggled his eyebrows at Keith. “Well, since her mom's a _lion_ , what about _Leona_?”

Keith considered it. “That's... not a bad idea, actually.”

“Keith, that's a terrible idea,” Shiro said.

Keith looked at him. “I don't see you offering any suggestions. Leona Kogane. Sounds good.” Shiro rested his face in his hand.

“What about a middle name, she needs a middle name.”

“I've already got one,” Keith said. He glanced at Kolivan, who gave a short nod in return.

“What, so you picked out a middle name but didn't remember to pick out a first name?”

Keith shook his head. “I didn't pick one out, it just sort of... suggests itself. And no, I'm not telling you what it is.”

“Is that a galra thing?”

Keith paused. “...Yes.”

* * *

Keith, along with Leona, disappeared almost immediately after he finished moving back into his quarters on the Castle. It was Lance who eventually found them, in the cockpit of the Red Lion. Keith was sitting in the pilot's seat, softly singing one of the Japanese lullabies that Shiro had taught him, and Leona was entranced by the dashboard light show that Red was putting on. “There you are,” Lance greeted. “We were starting to wonder. You thinking of taking her back?”

Keith shook his head. “No. I've got other responsibilities now. Can't go running off into danger again.”

“Who are you and what have you done with Keith?”

“Hmm.”

Lance leaned on the back of the pilot's seat to watch the lights with Keith and Leona. After several minutes, Keith said, “No one showed her before.”

Lance tore his eyes away from the dashboard to look down at Keith. “Showed who what?”

“Red. No one showed her the baby before. They weren't paladins anymore, so why would they? I definitely get it, they'd want to keep their child safe and Red as a warship is by definition not safe. But she wanted to see the baby, just once, so she kept doing it. And now I'm in a situation where the Castle is the safest place I want to be.”

“The Marmora base is safer,” Lance pointed out.

“Yeah, but I _want_ to be here. With you guys. And now that I know why Red did it, that's even more of a reason to be here. Her chasing after me when I was in danger wasn't her being possessive, it was her being maternal. She _wants_ to be a mom, insofar as a giant robot lion can be. So I'm going to let her.”

“So that would make me Leona's what, her stepdad? By the way, I still can't believe you actually named her that. You do know I was joking, right?”

“Does it matter? If she hates it when she gets older, she can change it. Or start going by her middle name.”

“Which is...?”

“Still not telling you.” Leona started fussing and grabbing at one of Keith's breasts. “Okay, okay, I hear you.” As he worked to expose it to feed her, he said, “It's a galra name. It's what Kolivan was going to suggest for her first name. But it... well it was my mother's name, and it carries a lot of baggage because of that. I don't want to expose her to that, not until she's old enough to understand. So for now, me and Kolivan are the only ones who are going to know.”

Lance nodded. “That's understandable. And it's probably a good idea for her to have a human name and a galra name. Still, make sure you tell her and don't just let her find out, yeah?”

“Definitely,” Keith said, smiling down at Leona.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on Tumblr: codefiant.tumblr.com


End file.
